Farming and family

There are many factors that lead to successful farming. If the objectives of farming are to increase household incomes and to achieve better living conditions there are a number of factors to put in mind. 

The poverty alleviation programmes that have so far been implemented by the government in the past decades – Rural Farmers Scheme, Nsindika Njake, Programme for Modern Agriculture, Naads, Bonna Bagaggawale, Emyooga, and Parish Development Model –have all been good ideas and quite well intentioned. 

However they have not been as successful as we expected and it is time we examine the factors that could have impeded their performance.

It is not enough to tell farmers to plant coffee, our most important cash crop, or to grow any other crops or to raise livestock. 

They also need access to agricultural infrastructure, such as good roads, reliable public transport, crop storage structures, farming machinery, irrigation facilities, and processing equipment. When the road network is bad and public transport is poor farmers have issues transporting their produce to markets. 

This, together with absence of storage facilities, leads to big post-harvest losses especially for easily perishable products like fruits, vegetables, and milk.

Another important impediment is the family size of the farming household and the width of its garden. Some farming enterprises cannot be successfully carried out on very small pieces of land and one of them is coffee growing. 

When a couple living on one acre has eight or ten children, it is difficult for such people to be successful farmers. Large families must have sufficient and nutritious food to live healthy and productive lives. 

They need clothing and decent housing. The children need to attend a good school. But it is difficult for such large families to achieve food security and to save some money just by farming. 

It is no use giving such a household Emyooga or parish development model funds expecting it to make any headway. A large family cannot easily produce enough food to feed on and to have some excess to sell.

Our leaders should start talking to farmers about producing the number of children that their small plots of land can sustain --- mind change. 

Large families lead to soil depletion because of over cultivation. They lead to land fragmentation, destruction of natural forests, and wetland degradation.

Mr Michael Ssali is a veteran journalist, 
[email protected]